Vender of the Week: Pace Athletic

Bringing science, awesome product knowledge and a whole heap of experience to the running retail world, Will and the team at Pace Athletic are setting runners all over New South Wales off on the right path. Will shares why he started Pace Athletic and how Vend has helped them on their way.

How did you get started?

Pace Athletic was started because of a general interest in running, and what we thought was a big gap in the marketplace. Every successful business has a point-of-difference, and in our industry (running stores), people seem to focus on one aspect of their business only. The big chains have “choice” (a big range to choose from), online stores have cheap prices, small stores usually have great product and knowledge. But no one really has all of these qualities combined. Stu and I thought, “Why can’t we offer our customers a complete service?”. We have second-to-none product knowledge, advice and service (including a digital gait-analysis fitting system), a huge range, great prices and an online store! We support the sport of running, and it supports us. Our logic was to give our customers no reason to shop with anyone else by offering a complete service that nobody else could match.

What brought you to Vend?

Having both a physical and an online store obviously means a much harder stock-keeping role. We need an inventory system that can auto-adjust when products sell in-store, or online. This brought upon difficulties when looking for software, because we were looking for a POS system that worked seamlessly with invoicing/accounting, data entry, inventory and of course, our online store. The solution – Vend, Xero & our integrated e-commerce platform. This saves us countless hours with manual data entry. Sales, invoices, inventory; it all works without fault. As an owner-operated business, the last thing we want to be doing is wasting time with data entry. This gives us much more time to focus on the more important things.

Do you have any advice for new retailers?

One of our own personal friends/role models once told us (although we can’t remember the exact quote) to “aim high”. He explained to us that success comes only when you are always trying to improve. When you reach a goal – set a new one! If you become comfortable with where you are, then you are just giving others a chance to catch up.

– Will Hatton, Co-Founder / Running Guru, Pace Athletic

Do you have an awesome success story? Share it with Grace and the 12,000-strong Vend community!

Grace is a Marketing Assistant at Vend and helps make cool things happen behind the scenes. She enjoys talking to incredible Vend retailers from around the world and making the world a better place with her side projects. You can get in touch with Grace by email or connect with her on Google+.